ATLANTA — Forecasters issued an unusually dire winter storm warning Tuesday for much of Georgia, but many residents already were heeding advice to stay home and off the roads, leaving much of metro Atlanta a ghost town during the usually busy morning commute.

The storm could be a "catastrophic event" reaching "historical proportions," the National Weather Service said in its warnings. Rain was falling Tuesday morning in Atlanta, with snow in north Georgia, and schools were canceled.

"Basically, everyone from the office is going to be working from home" on Tuesday, said Dakota Herrera as he left a car park in downtown Atlanta to go to his office Monday.

It was a stark contrast to the storm that hit Atlanta two weeks earlier. Downtown streets of the South's business hub were jammed with unmoving cars, highway motorists slept overnight in vehicles or abandoned them where they sat, and students were forced to camp out in school gymnasiums when roads turned too treacherous for buses to navigate.